Malcolm Turnbull was no doubt relieved when the prime ministerial jet lifted off from Australian soil yesterday, bound for the United States and his first formal round of discussions in Washington with an American president.

In Turnbull’s own words – applied to Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce’s domestic troubles – he will be hoping to leave behind a “world of woe”.

After a steadier start to the new year, the Joyce scandal, involving an affair with a political staffer, has cut the ground from under those improved prospects.

This has been reflected in the latest round of polling, which shows the Coalition slipping back against the Labor opposition. Turnbull’s own approval rating has taken a hit.

For these and other reasons, not least the need to establish a sound working relationship with a new administration, the prime minister will be looking to a circuit-breaker.

Whether Turnbull’s “first 100 years of mateship” visit to Washington – with state premiers and business leaders in tow – provides a diversion from his domestic woes remains to be seen.

The hokey branding for the mission refers to the centenary of American soldiers fighting under Australian command on the Western Front in the Battle of Hamel in 1918.

In Washington, Turnbull’s discussions with President Donald Trump will focus primarily on China’s rise, the North Korean nuclear issue, and trade.

How to respond to North Korea’s provocations represents an immediate problem. But in the longer term, China’s expanding power and influence constitute the greatest security challenge facing Australia since the second world war.

In his public statements, Turnbull has been alternately hawkish and conciliatory toward Beijing, but it appears his instincts tend to align themselves with an American hedging strategy.

The Turnbull view of how to manage China’s rise was given particular expression in a speech in June 2017 to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. In this speech he called for “new sources of leadership [in the Indo-Pacific] to help the United States shape our common good”.

Turnbull’s Shangri-La speech was forthright for an Australian prime minister. He sharply criticised China’s “unilateral actions to seize or create territory or militarise disputed areas” in the South China Sea.

Beijing denies it, but it is clear it has been constructing a defence perimeter on islands and features in disputed waters. This prompted the following from Turnbull:

China has gained the most from the peace and harmony in our region and it has the most to lose if it is threatened … A coercive China would find its neighbours resenting demands they cede their autonomy and strategic space and look to counterweigh Beijing’s power by bolstering alliances and partnerships, between themselves and especially with the United States.

That speech was followed by increased efforts to expand a quadrilateral security dialogue between Australia, Japan, India and the US.

Turnbull’s visit to Japan in January for high-profile talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphasised shared regional security goals with other members of the so-called Quad.

What steps might be taken to further develop security collaboration between Australia, the US, India and Japan will almost certainly be on the table in Washington.

The Trump administration’s appointment of Admiral Harry Harris, the outgoing head of the US Pacific Command, as the ambassador-designate in Canberra is a signal of its intentions.

Harris has a hawkish view of China’s expanding influence in the Indo-Pacific. His participation in a security conference in Delhi in January along with Australian, Japanese and Indian naval commanders was significant in light of stepped-up efforts to bolster maritime collaboration between Quad members.

However – and this is a sizeable “however” – Turnbull needs to be careful not to be sucked into an American slipstream where China is concerned. Australia’s commercial interests dictate prudence in how it positions itself between a rising China and the US under an unpredictable Trump presidency.

The new US National Defence Strategy exposed differences between Canberra and Washington in their views of “revisionist” China and Russia as threats to US hegemony.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop felt obliged to distance Australia from the Trump administration’s characterisation of attempts by China and Russia to “shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model”. She said:

We have a different perspective on Russia and China, clearly. We do not see Russia or China as posing a military threat to Australia.

Turnbull, for his part, provided a more nuanced response. He said:

We don’t see threats from our neighbours in the region but nonetheless every country must always plan ahead and you need to build the capabilities to defend yourself not just today but in 10 years or 20 years hence.

The US withdrawal from the TPP, as one of Trump’s first executive acts as president, was disappointing. A trading bloc in the Indo-Pacific accounting for 36% of global GDP would have served as a counterweight to China’s surging trade and investment ambitions.

Significantly, Turnbull will discuss the CPTPP on the eve of the initialling of the agreement among the 11 remaining participants on March 8.

Trump has indicated he might be receptive to arguments for American re-engagement in the CPTPP process. However, this would require the renegotiation of provisions on such contentious issues as dispute settlements, copyright and intellectual property.

It is hard to see this happening in a timely manner. In a sense, the train has left the station.

The latter is a vast Chinese infrastructure scheme. China is seeking to strengthen its influence in surrounding states by recycling a portion of its foreign exchange reserves in road, rail, port and other such projects.

It is not clear just how Turnbull and Trump might seek to provide alternative sources of infrastructure funding for projects to counter Chinese attempts to buy influence far and wide.

Such a scheme emerged from a pre-summit briefing in Canberra. The fact it is being floated attests to concerns in Washington and Canberra about China’s success in using its financial heft to extend its security interests.

There was a nearly two-fold increase in anti-dumping investigations in Australia in 2017. According to the Productivity Commission, these protectionist measures “raise costs to consumers and reduce competitive pressures, leading to less efficient resource use in the country levying the protection”.

The Productivity Commission estimates that for every A$1 increase in tariff revenue, economic activity in Australia falls by A$0.64. The commission also says that for “every year that higher tariffs prevailed, GDP would be lower by over one per cent”. Thus, “a household that spends A$2,500 a fortnight on goods and services would be worse off by A$100 a fortnight”.

More power for the government

Moreover, legislative proposals tabled in the federal parliament in late 2017 could vastly expand the discretionary power the government has to set benchmark prices for imported products in the Australian market. These can even be set at higher levels than the prices in the home market from which they were exported.

Indeed, according to international trade law practitioners, “dumping duties at high rates will give the Minister an unprecedented price-fixing power over imported products, to the extent that foreign exporters and their Australian importers may be unable to compete in Australian markets”.

In other words, this proposal could exacerbate the trend of covert trade protectionism in Australia.

According to a 2017 WTO report on trade measures in the G20 countries, new anti-dumping actions have outpaced terminations by three to one. This is the largest gap since 2012. Australia also had a fourfold increase in new countervailing duty measures (trade retaliations, in other words) from 2015 to 2016, second only to the USA. In 2016 Australia started nearly one-third of all G20 trade retaliations.

The subjects of anti-dumping actions are usually technical barriers to trade that measurably affect certain industries. In the G20 countries most of these relate to agricultural policies.

Australia has in recent times raised specific trade concerns about the European Union’s agriculture policies, India’s minimum prices for wheat and sugar, Canadian subsidies for milk and wine, and the United States’ purchase of cheese stock, export credit guarantees and international food aid.

The anti-dumping data and legislative trends clearly show that Australia is at the forefront of the trend towards greater (covert) trade protectionism among developed countries.

Several government policies, including the abolition of the temporary work 457 visas, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s exemption of certain foreign financial suppliers from particular regulatory requirements, and the Mobile Black Spot Program (to improve mobile coverage in regional and remote Australia) have also come under scrutiny by the World Trade Organisation

This does not completely undermine Australia’s leadership in new free trade agreements in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. But it does show that Australian trade diplomacy is taking place within the creation of a less-than-liberal order of global economy.

The revived trade agreement, now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), has finally made it across the line. It’s a considerable win for Australian farmers and service providers, in a trading area worth about A$90 billion.

The 11 remaining countries from the initial Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement finally agreed to go ahead with the deal without the US, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The deal reduces the scope for controversial investor-state dispute settlements, where foreign investors can bypass national courts and sue governments for compensation for harming their investments. It introduces stronger safeguards to protect the governments’ right to regulate in the public interest and prevent unwarranted claims.

The new agreement is more of an umbrella framework for separate yet coordinated bilateral deals. In fact, Australia’s Trade Minister Steven Ciobo said:

The agreement will deliver 18 new free trade agreements between the CPTPP parties. For Australia that means new trade agreements with Canada and Mexico and greater market access to Japan, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.

It means a speedier process for reducing import barriers on key Australian products, such as beef, lamb, seafood, cheese, wine and cotton wool.

It also promises less competition for Australian services exports, encouraging other governments to look to use Australian services and reducing the regulations of state-owned enterprises.

Australia now also has new bilateral trade deals with Canada and Mexico as part and parcel of the new agreement. This could be worth a lot to the Australian economy if it were to fill commercial gaps created by potential trade battles within North America and between the US and China.

What’s in and out of the new agreement

The new CPTPP rose from the ashes of the old agreement because of the inclusion of a list of 20 suspended provisions on matters that were of interest for the US. These would be revived in the event of a US comeback.

These suspended provisions involved substantial changes in areas like investment, public procurement, intellectual property rights and transparency. With the freezing of further copyright restrictions and the provisions on investor-state dispute settlements, these suspensions appear to re-balance the agreement in favour of Australian governments and consumers.

In fact, the scope of investor-state dispute settlements are narrower in the CPTPP, because foreign private companies who enter into an investment contract with the Australian government will not be able to use it if there is a dispute about that contract. The broader safeguards in the agreement make sure that the Australian government cannot be sued for measures related to public education, health and other social services.

The one part of the agreement relating to the temporary entry for business people is rather limited in scope and does not have the potential to impact on low-skilled or struggling categories of Australian workers. In fact, it only commits Australia to providing temporary entry (from three months, up to two years) of only five generic categories of CPTPP workers. These include occupations like installers and servicers, intra-corporate transferees, independent executives, and contractual service suppliers.

Bits of the original agreement are still included in the CPTPP such as tariffs schedules that slash custom duties on 95% of trade in goods. But this was the easy part of the deal.

Before the deal is signed

The new agreement will be formally signed in Chile on March 8 2018, and will enter into force as soon as at least six members ratify it. This will probably happen later in the year or in early 2019.

The geopolitical symbolism of this timing is poignant. The CPTPP is coming out just as Donald Trump raises the temperature in the China trade battle by introducing new tariffs. It also runs alongside China’s attempts to finalise a much bigger regional trade agreement, the 16-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Even though substantially the CPTPP is only a TPP-lite at best, it still puts considerable pressure on the US to come out of Trump’s protectionist corner.

It spells out the geopolitical consequences of the US trade policy switch, namely that the Asia Pacific countries are willing to either form a more independent bloc or align more closely with Chinese interests.

Will this be enough to convince the Trump administration to reverse its course on global trade? At present, this seems highly unlikely. To bet on the second marriage of the US with transpacific multilateral trade would be a triumph of hope over experience.

Enhanced counter-terrorism measures help to protect lives, but unfortunately also reduce trade, our study shows. The costs of increased security measures are also not shared equally. While some costs are passed onto consumers, exporters and importers often bear the higher costs.

Since 2000, there have been more than 72,000 terrorist acts causing nearly 170,000 deaths. In our study we analysed the impact of terrorism on trade in over 160 countries from 1976 to 2014.

The effects of terrorism in one country spill over across national borders to reduce the trade of other nations. On average, each terrorist incident reduces trade by about US$6.4 million for each trading partner. The effect is also long lived; a terrorist attack can reduce trade over the next five years.

How security measures change trade

One way counter-terrorism reduces trade is through time delays. Some security and counter-terrorism measures cause longer delays at airports, ports and borders and thereby increase the time it takes to trade.

Food products are particularly vulnerable to shipping delays and the disruption of supply chains that arise from tighter border controls. Trading delays can be very costly. One study shows trade is reduced by more than 1% for each additional day it’s delayed.

Counter-terrorism measures also increase charges and transport costs. Transport costs in particular are critical for trade.

After the September 11 attacks in the US, many nations applied stricter counter-terrorism measures to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. These measures add to the cost of importing and exporting.

Some of the individual cost components may be relatively small. For example, anti-money-laundering compliance costs in Australia are pretty insignificant. Nonetheless, all these delays and charges add up.

As the OECD points out, doing nothing about terrorism is not an option. Preventive security measures are indispensable to secure trade, infrastructure and lives.

However, some counter-terrorism measures are effectively non-tariff barriers that do more to protect specific industries than to protect people. That is, some security measures have a similar effect to tariffs, in that they divert trade from lower cost overseas producers, to higher cost domestic producers.

And some measures are ineffective. For example, a key objective of counter-terrorism policies to control money-laundering is to choke off external funding for terrorists. However, some terrorist groups, most notably insurgents in Iraq and ISIS, are largely self-financed.

Our results also show that terrorism has a greater adverse effect on trade in sub-Saharan Africa in particular. This region is particularly vulnerable to terrorism due to governance problems such as corruption. Ironically, this region is especially in need of the benefits of trade to improve governance and institutions.

Our study also shows terrorism reduces trade by diverting government attention from trade liberalisation and reform. Promoting trade is an even more difficult task in an era of accelerated terrorism.

Trade itself can help counter terrorism

Trade spillover effects created by terrorism highlight the importance of co-ordinating counter-terrorism measures between countries. However, this also requires greater co-ordination between policies.

Trade can play an important role in curtailing terrorism by bringing nations closer and fuelling economic prosperity and development. Combined with other economic policies and strategies, greater co-ordination between security and trade policies can increase safeguards while lowering trade barriers. It can also offset the higher trade costs that result from extra security measures.

By reducing trade, counter-terrorism policies inadvertently drive a wedge between nations and make nations poorer. Making countries poorer in turn makes it harder to combat terrorism.

It is clear that trade protectionism is alive and well in the G20, whose countries account for 78% of global trade. But this protectionism isn’t in the form of tariffs, which are duties placed on imports, making imported goods and services more expensive than they would be otherwise. Instead, trade protectionism is being pursued through “non-tariff barriers” such as import quotas, restrictive product standards, and subsidies for domestic goods and services.

This shows that while countries are reducing the obvious barriers to trade, like tariffs, they are still pursuing stealth forms of trade protectionism through non-tariff barriers.

Our research on trade protectionism in the services sector shows that the lower the barriers to trade, the greater company profits. Lower trade barriers create a larger market for Australian goods and services.

We also found that increased domestic regulation leads to higher profits as standards improve across the sector. For Australia this is very significant because the services sector employs four out of five Australians and accounts for 20% of Australia’s total exports.

Eliminating trade protectionism is also good for consumers, as it means a larger market for goods and services. This leads to lower prices and more choice of goods and services.

The World Trade Organisation uses the term “trade restrictive activity” for measures like the imposition of a tariff. “Trade facilitation” refers to the simplification of export and import processes, making it easier to trade across countries. “Trade remedies” refers to actions taken by states against certain imports that are hurting domestic industries.

The data show that tariffs have been declining in the G20 over the past few years, while countries have been easing the processes of exporting and importing. However there have been a lot of trade remedies, as countries try to protect their domestic industries.

Until 2015 there was a huge increase in non-tariff measures, which then sharply declined. Since then not many measures have been removed. This shows that non-tariff barriers are currently the major mechanism for trade restrictions in the most developed economies.

As in the case of technical standards and regulations, non-tariff barriers can be used as a form of covert trade protectionism.

According to the Australian Productivity Commission, trade restrictions directly raise the cost of both foreign and domestic goods and services, negatively impacting both Australian consumers and businesses.

Where to from here?

President Donald Trump’s trade agenda aims to distance the United States from the World Trade Organisation, which was setup to remove barriers to international trade.

In response, companies in the United States are now filing a huge number of anti-dumping cases against foreign goods and services.

And yet, the Australian government and the Labor opposition maintain an unwavering, untested, bipartisan assertion: no-one will be resettled in Australia, as that will encourage people smugglers.

By extension, Australia will not accept New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 refugees, as that will provide an equivalent incentive to the people-smuggling trade.

The historical evidence suggests the government’s fears are unfounded. People smuggling will not revive simply because refugees are resettled in Australia. There are good reasons to believe refugees currently stuck in offshore detention on Nauru and Manus Island can be relocated to Australia and New Zealand without this leading to a revival of boat traffic.

A short history

Offshore processing and turning back boats on the high seas were introduced in 2001 and again in 2013 in response to a growing number of boat arrivals.

Between 1999 and October 2001, more than 10,000 asylum seekers arrived on Christmas Island by boat. Between June 2011 and September 2013, 40,000 people arrived. But when offshore processing and turnback policies were introduced, the boats stopped arriving in both periods within months.

But what happened to the asylum seekers detained offshore during the Howard government years?

From 2001 to 2008, of the 1,153 refugees and asylum seekers resettled from Nauru and Manus Island, 705 went to Australia, 401 to New Zealand and 47 to other Western countries. Resettlement of all but 82 occurred under the Howard government, with most occurring from 2002 to 2004. A further 483 people were found not to be refugees and returned to their countries of origin.

The resettlements occurred without fanfare, while maintaining the official policy of offshore detention and processing, and boat turnbacks. From 2002 to 2007, 18 boats arrived with 288 asylum seekers. In addition, one boat was turned back with 14 passengers.

In 2008, after the Rudd government dismantled the offshore processing and turnback policies, seven boats arrived with 161 asylum seekers. This number spiked dramatically from that time.

This analysis suggests the threat of offshore detention and processing and boat turnbacks is a clear deterrent to prevent people coming to Australia by boat. Importantly, the deterrent effect does not rely on a blanket ban on resettlement of refugees from Nauru and Manus Island to Australia and New Zealand.

No long-term resettlement options

Accept for the moment that offshore processing and boat turnbacks are necessary to deter asylum seekers from travelling by boat to Australia.

Accept that these policies stem an uncontrollable flow of humanitarian migration through Indonesia to Australia, prevent people drowning at sea and enable Australia to resettle more refugees through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ resettlement program.

The policy issue in 2001 and 2013 was the uncontrollable arrival of boats. But the issue now is where and when to resettle refugees and asylum seekers who have been sent to Manus Island and Nauru since the reintroduction of offshore processing. On this issue, there is no plan.

No case for the hard line

If this analysis of the incentives proves to be wrong, and it turns out that resettling refugees from Nauru and Manus Island in Australia and New Zealand does increase the number of asylum-seeker boats attempting to reach Australia, we know from the experiences of 2001 and 2013 that the combination of offshore detention and boat turnbacks is an extremely effective deterrent – one that can swiftly be reinstated.

In July 2013, the month Kevin Rudd announced no asylum seeker arriving by boat would ever be resettled in Australia, 4,338 people arrived by boat in Australia. After Rudd announced the new policy, the number dropped to 1,650 in August and 861 in September. None of these asylum seekers ended up in Australia, instead being transferred to Nauru or Manus Island.

In October 2013, when the new Coalition government added a turnback policy to offshore processing and resettlement, 346 people were intercepted and transferred to Nauru or Manus Island. This dropped to 222 in November, then rose to 369 in December. And then, in the 31 months from January 2014 to the present, there has been just one boat with 158 passengers transferred to Nauru.

In addition, from January 2014 to July 2015, 20 boats were intercepted and turned back to Indonesia or other countries in the region, carrying a total of 633 passengers.

At any time offshore detention and processing have been in place, the number of boat arrivals has been very small. We can be confident that, if necessary, a vigorous reinstatement of regional processing and the turnback policy would once again “stop the boats”.

But at this time, in light of the ongoing and intensifying humanitarian crisis on Nauru and Manus Island, there is no case for maintaining the inflexible bipartisan line on resettlement.

Alex Reilly, Deputy Dean and Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School

Nigerian girls are being forced to work as prostitutes in Mali "slave camps," Nigerian officials say, reports CISA.

The girls, many of them underage, are often promised jobs in Europe but end up in brothels, said the government’s anti-trafficking agency. According to BBC correspondent, the brothels are run by older Nigerian women who prevent them from leaving and take all their earnings.

Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (Naptip) said officials visited Mali in September to follow up "horrendous reports" from victims, aid workers and clergy in Mali.The agency said it was working with Malian police to free the girls and help them return to Nigeria.

They said there were hundreds of brothels, each housing up to 200 girls, run by Nigerian "madams" who force them to work against their will and take their earnings.

"We are talking of thousands and thousands of girls," Simon Egede, Executive Secretary of Naptip, told a news conference in Abuja, adding that they were between 20,000 to 40,000.

He, however, did not give details as to how the figure had been reached.

In a statement, Egede said girls were "held in bondage for the purposes of forced sexual exploitation and servitude or slavery-like practices."

"The madams control their freedom of movement, where they work, when they work and what they receive," he said.

The trade is centred on the capital Bamako and large cities, but the most notorious brothels are in the mining towns of Kayes and Mopti, where the sex workers live in "near slavery conditions," said Naptip.

Many of the brothels there also had abortion clinics where foetuses were removed by traditional healers for use in rituals, said Egede.

Most of the girls were reported to have come from Delta and Edo States in Nigeria.

Many were lured with the promise of work in Europe, given fake travel documents and made to swear an oath that they would not tell anyone where they were going.

On arrival in Mali, they were told they would have to work as prostitutes to pay off their debts. Prostitution is legal in Mali but not if it involves minors.

Naptip said it had also uncovered two major trafficking routes used to transport the women from Nigeria through Benin, Niger and Bukina Faso to Mali.

Egede said Naptip was working with the police in Mali to return the girls to Nigeria safely, shut down the trade and prosecute the traffickers.

Youths smash walls, rant against evangelist for building home for worship services.

HO CHI MINH CITY, July 23 (CDN) — A gang of youths on Sunday (July 18) attacked a house church as the congregation worshiped in Xi Thoai village in Phu Yen Province on Vietnam’s south central coast, Christian sources said.

The local youths smashed the walls of the home and wreaked havoc within as they railed against evangelist Mang Vuong for being a Christian and for building his home to be a house church, the sources said. The sources noted that on the night of June 10 the same youths, spurred by local authorities, broke into Vuong’s home in Xuan Lanh Commune, Dong Xuan district, stole more than $3,000 and destroyed household furnishings, utensils and books.

Since then this same gang of local youths has been harassing and threatening Vuong, sources said. The pastor reported death threats.

Vuong, of the Hroi ethnic minority, is a worker for the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South), or ECVN(S), Vietnam’s largest government-registered denomination. When the Hroi church at Soi Nga some six kilometers (nearly four miles) away became full, leaders decided to start a congregation in Xi Thoai village where a number of Hroi Christians lived.

In Vietnam, a common approach for church expansion is to build a roomy home for an evangelist to serve also as a meeting place. The evangelist’s house in Xi Thoai was nearly completed when it was first attacked last month.

According to a petition the evangelist sent to commune, district and provincial officials on June 12, it was village officials who assembled young people for a meeting on June 9 and plied them with liquor. Very late at night the youths, including several sons of commune officials, attacked the evangelist’s house.

The petition blames village Chief La Mo Duc, Deputy Chief Le Minh Dien and others for inciting the young people. These two officials are also the local Communist Party leaders.

The gang stole 60 million dong (US$3,091), which had just been borrowed to pay the house contractor, according to the petition. They burned Christian books and either stole or destroyed everything else in the house, including new building materials and the contractor’s tools.

Police from local to provincial levels came to the area several times to “investigate,” visits that village Christians said were attempts to identify the Christians in the village. In the next six weeks, sources said, authorities did nothing to address the crime, and local officials did nothing to stop the daylight raid on Sunday (July 18).

“There was no other reason for this – it is religious persecution, pure and simple, incited and allowed by local government officials,” said one prominent ECVN(S) leader. “The inaction of higher officials casts into doubt our country’s claim to uphold religious freedom.”

A provincial ECVN(S) leader, Pastor Vo Thanh Phe, said that for six weeks he had been urging local and provincial officials to take action, without success. Recently a top national leader of the ECVN(S) visited the village to encourage the beleaguered evangelist and Christians. He informed the provincial ECVN(S) leaders that, having personally verified the facts, he would petition the prime minister.

A source said the ECVN(S) leader needed to make the personal visit as it was assumed that the government had tapped the phones of the local Christians.

Christian groups in Vietnam have found that such petitions rarely accomplish anything. Sources said often the petitions are simply referred back down to local officials, who make life harder on those who have complained.

Phu Yen Province has been the site of other recent abuses. Two ethnic minority Ede evangelists, Y Co and Y Du of the unregistered Vietnam Good News Mission Church, were arrested in January and remain in Phu Lam Prison without charge or trial. This is contrary to Vietnamese law (see http://www.compassdirect.org, “Vietnamese Christian, Family Forced into Hiding,” April 1).

Their wives reported that officials told them their husbands would be freed if the prisoners renounced their faith.

A government seminar in May on national religion policy in Phu Yen Province has apparently had little effect on some local officials.

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, visiting Hanoi on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the normalization of US-Vietnam relations, raised the issue of human rights and religious freedom with Vietnam’s leaders yesterday (July 22). She had been pressed by human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers to raise the cases of jailed democracy and religious rights activists with Vietnam.

Clinton said the U.S. side wanted to work with Vietnam “to support efforts to pursue reforms and protect basic rights and freedoms,” The Associated Press reported yesterday. When the sensitive subject of human rights came up, Vietnam Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem described it simply as “a difference between Vietnam and the U.S.”

“Since Vietnam achieved its goal of obtaining U.S. trade privileges in 2006 and acceded to the World Trade Organization in 2007, it has hardened its treatment of democracy, rights and religious freedom activists,” said one long-time observer. “Some keen observers of the Vietnam scene do not foresee any positive changes in Vietnam’s human rights record at least until after next January’s five-yearly Communist Party Congress. In preparation for the congress, for which all major decisions are made in advance, no party factions can be seen to be weak on perceived threats to the revolution.”